Spirituality

The interfaith group I was part of for a year and a half is still going strong. Christian, Jew, Muslim, Sikh and most other faith groups were represented at our monthly meetings. The faith leaders were all of sweet and gentle dispositions and I enjoyed my time with them. It was interesting and wonderful to learn something about the religious beliefs of human beings whose relatives had come from afar to live and prosper in the ancestral homeland of the Algonquin People.

I asked the faith leaders at one of our monthly meetings if they had ever spoken in their houses of worship about the fact that the great City of Ottawa was/is built on lands stolen from the Algonquin people. If any of the faith leaders had indeed mentioned this to their followers, they did not admit to it that day. Why they would not clearly explain to their congregation how it came to be that this territory went from being under the care and stewardship of the Algonquins into the control and development of Europeans is something that does not spiritually register with me. It also puzzled me that most of the faith leaders seemed to be very much at peace spiritually, with living and prospering on stolen land. I believe that by doing so without offering any words of appreciation and acknowledgement to this territory’s first inhabitants is against God’s direction, is this not so? I would think it is the duty of the faith leader, whoever it might be, to demand that governments treat the original inhabitants of this country with fairness and respect at all times. Do we not deserve it? The resources which make this country the richest in the world are resources incessantly stolen from our homelands. Any faith leaders who refuse to open their eyes to this fact should be ashamed of themselves. After all, it is God they have vowed to love and promised to do work as best they can in “His” likeness, not the devil’s.

The government of Canada and most Canadians do not want their faith leaders to ever speak or even to whisper anything about the past and present injustices against the First Nations. The faith leaders oblige Canada and say nothing, believing that by doing so they prove themselves to be honorable and good citizens. With this inaction, they make the grave mistake of selling their souls to Canada. As much as I care about Canada, I will never give her my soul. My heart perhaps, but my soul, never.

Wisdom – it is one of our Grandfather Teachings. With wisdom at the forefront of our decision making processes we can separate what is “sense” from what is “nonsense”. Would a “wise” man offer gold (money) as a gift to a newborn baby? What need would a baby have for gold? Gold is not capable of loving the child nor does it have a breast from which the baby can draw a life giving sustenance. A baby knows nothing of money and neither does the God I believe in. When the end of my life is at hand, let my soul be taken to a place where technology does not exist and where money is unheard of. This is my daily prayer to Kichi Manido.

Before money came into existence, all the lands on Mother Earth provided for all human beings wherever they were living on this planet. The land produced all things necessary to feed, clothe and house all of humankind. Fresh water was everywhere. Human beings wanted for nothing. But then money appeared and everything changed. Lands were raped of their resources and misery and starvation became common for all the Indigenous Peoples living the world over.

Wherever there is money, there will also be ruthless gangsters, warlords and greedy people who will do what they feel necessary to amass it and they will hurt you severely and without conscience if you try and stop them. Thank you, God, for keeping money and people who sell out their souls for it away from the world I wish to go to after death claims me.

For sure, the world we have created here and now dictates that money is necessary. But we make a mistake of great spiritual consequence when we place concerns of money before the health of our souls and before the health of the waters, the winds and all life placed on Mother Earth by Kichi Manido.

3 Responses to Spirituality

Thanks for your words again Albert. They have directed my thoughts towards something I have been learning over the past few years.

I find great joy in meditating on the medicine wheel. The power for me comes from seeing my life’s path in a circular way. Ever flowing. Eternally recycling. You touch here on both wisdom and innocence (the child). I regularly smudge and contemplate upon my life using the four directions and the flow of the wheel (I use Richard Wagamese’s words: Innocence, Humility, Honesty and Wisdom to represent East, South, West and North respectively). I have found the critical point at this time in my journey is often the movement in my thinking from wisdom (the elder) back to innocence (the child). An understanding of the world we see around us can cause a person to feel both angry and cold. The medicine wheel teaches that to focus on attainment of wisdom can cause a certain sort of death. It teaches one to spiritually remain in the centre, allowing the lessons of all four directions to be learned at any given point in time. Herein, for me, lies both its mystery and its beauty. When I feel frustration and pain beginning to come to my life because I see things and I don’t like what I am perceiving, I feel the need to complete the next stage in the flow of the wheel, which is to choose innocence – a child’s approach to the source of the pain. It can be very hard but I have found it to get easier with practice. The consequences of not moving from wisdom back to innocence are bitterness and stagnation. The flow of the wheel reminds me that it is necessary to choose this step. To give my pain back to The Great Mystery and realize I cannot fully understand it and so must choose childlikeness. More strongly stated, the ultimate form of wisdom is to choose to be “as a child.”

Ten minutes with the 4 sacred plants and the wheel never fails to make me feel whole again. Complete and healed. At peace.